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In Kenya, a German is in custody for allegedly abusing minors for years. A previous alleged victim warned about the man more than a decade ago – long without success.
The allegations against the 62-year-old weigh heavily: he is said to have abused or sexually exploited at least nine minors in Kenya from 2006 to 2023, sometimes for years. According to the indictment that dem SWR and the “Spiegel” is available, the youngest of the male victims was 12 years old.
The alleged abuse is said to have taken place, among other things, on a farm that the man from Heilbronn had built as part of an aid project – 200 kilometers north-west of the capital Nairobi. His lawyer left a written list of questions about the allegations unanswered. The accused himself, who has been in custody since February, denied individual allegations at a court hearing.
Defendant’s farm where he is said to have abused children for years.
A Kenyan reported anonymously in an interview that her son and later her grandson only moved to the accused’s project farm at the beginning of this year. The 62-year-old promised the children that he would support them in their education. They had hoped to go to university. Now the two children are in state care and are in a witness protection program.
According to the indictment, they were sexually exploited. The woman is now afraid that the children could harm themselves if they return to their environment. “The lives of these children are ruined forever because they were traumatized. There is no life for them here, no school. The children will question themselves for the rest of their lives,” she says.
Affected person reports abuse in the 1980s
In Germany, Thomas F. sees his worst fears confirmed. For years, the 55-year-old, whose real name is different, has been warning of the activities of the accused in Kenya. He himself was abused by the now 62-year-old as an altar boy in the Catholic parish of Heilbronn-Sontheim in the 1980s. At that time, as an honorary senior altar boy, he had organized excursions and meetings for young people and altar boys.
Thomas F. im reported that he had repeatedly attacked him SWR. “It started around 12 or 13, until I was about 15. At some point it went over the red line. That was touching my genital area. Conversely, he also wanted to be touched, to be satisfied,” says F .
In 2016, his case and another were recognized by the diocese of Rottenburg-Stuttgart. Man please “for forgiveness that your Trust has been abused and you have suffered mental injuries,” It says in a letter from Bishop Gebhard Fürst to F. in May 2016. The lawyer of the accused in Kenya did not comment on this allegation.
At the time the diocese recognized the abuse, the former chief altar boy had long since moved away from Heilbronn. He first joined a Catholic order that is also active in Africa, and eventually set up his own development project for smallholders in Kenya. The aim is also: The training of young men in the agricultural sector. As late as 2016, the project was advertised on the website of the Heilbronn-Neckarsulm deanery, which belongs to the Rottenburg-Stuttgart diocese: “The accused remains on site and lives directly with ‘his’ Kenyan boys and their families!”
“Sternsinger” collected around 280,000 euros
The project of the former chief altar boy found great support in his former homeland. A spokesman confirms that around 280,000 euros were collected in several parishes for the children’s missionary work “Die Sternsinger” alone. In 2013, a separate development association called “Karunga” was founded, whose chairman at the time was an employee of the Heilbronn-Neckarsulm deanery.
Alarmed by regular circulars that the former senior altar boy sent from Kenya to Germany, Thomas F. initially filed a criminal complaint in 2012, simply to draw attention to what was happening in Kenya and to warn of the accused there.
Because the alleged abuse of him was already statute-barred under criminal law. After his case was officially recognized by the church, he also informed the Sternsinger-Kindermissionswerk. There it says that in December 2022 concrete evidence of alleged abuse by the 62-year-old in Kenya was received and then the Federal Criminal Police Office was informed via an information platform. This may have gotten the investigations in Kenya going in the first place.
Explosive appraisal
However, the Sternsinger-Kindermissionswerk had already commissioned a comprehensive report in 2018. Two human rights lawyers in Kenya examined the project of the man from Heilbronn and also interviewed young people on site. According to Sternsinger-Kindermissionswerk, the report showed “possible risks in terms of child protection,” but “no concrete evidence of sexual abuse.”
In the report that dem SWR and the “Spiegel”, the two lawyers call explosive details regarding an “immediate and serious” risk of damage to the minors. In at least one case, the head of the aid project approached a young man in order to enter into a relationship with him.
In addition, the lawyers had the impression that the young men interviewed had been briefed beforehand. Crucial approvals and child protection standards applicable in Kenya are said to have been missing.
According to the Sternsinger-Kindermissionswerk, the report or “essential test results” were sent to the Kenyan authorities, including the Diocese of Rottenburg-Stuttgart and the Karunga Association, by 2019 at the latest. Nevertheless, this association did not end the cooperation with the former chief altar boy until 2021 – among other things because of “not sufficiently comprehensible[r] Use of the funds”. When asked, the association wrote in writing: “With our withdrawal from the project, they would be [Anm. der Redaktion: die sexuellen Übergriffe] not been avoided.”
For Matthias Katsch, managing director and founding member of the “Eckiger Tisch” initiative for those affected, this is incomprehensible. No one can know what would have happened if the Karunga Association had withdrawn from the project earlier. But: “You would have […] a clear boundary is shown. So they have to put up with the accusation that they helped him maintain opportunity structures in which he could commit assaults, crimes for which he is now accused.” However, the former chief altar boy from Heilbronn in Kenya has not yet been convicted.
Diocese: No influence on the association
Katsch is also critical of the role of the diocese of Rottenburg-Stuttgart. Because when asked, the Karunga Association is an “independent, private association over which the diocese has no influence” from the church. However, the chairman of the board was for a long time an employee of a Catholic deanery that belongs to the diocese.
Katsch says: “The responsibility cannot be divided at this point, and the salaries, the church salaries of the former chief altar boy are clear. They have also been recognized by the diocese by making a recognition payment to the person concerned.” According to the diocese, until 2018 church communities promoted or collected money for the project of the accused in Kenya.
In any case, Thomas F. is angry that it took so long before authorities and church bodies took a closer look at the Kenyan project of the man from Heilbronn. Now he is relieved that the judiciary in Kenya has intervened and he sympathizes with the young people there. Because what he experienced in the 1980s still casts a shadow over his life: “They weren’t trivial offenses, they had a massive impact on my development and my psyche. He did violence to me.”